"In American Archives Shawn Michelle Smith offers a bold and disturbing account of how photography and the sciences of biological racialism joined forces in the nineteenth century to offer an idea of what Americans look like-- or 'should' look like. Her varied sources, which include t...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben

1. Verfasser:	Smith, Shawn Michelle 1965- (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press [1999]
Schlagworte:	1800-1899 Manners and customs Portrait photography Social classes Portrait photography / United States / History / 19th century Social classes / United States / History / 19th century
Online-Zugang:	DE-255 Volltext
Zusammenfassung:	"In American Archives Shawn Michelle Smith offers a bold and disturbing account of how photography and the sciences of biological racialism joined forces in the nineteenth century to offer an idea of what Americans look like-- or 'should' look like. Her varied sources, which include the middle-class portrait, baby picture, criminal mugshot, and eugenicist record, as well as literary, scientific, and popular texts, enable her to demonstrate how new visual paradigms posed bodily appearance as an index to interior 'essence.' Ultimately we see how competing preoccupations over gender, class, race, and American identity were played out in the making of a wide range of popular and institutional photographs. Smith demonstrates that as the body was variously mapped and defined as the key to essentialized identities, the image of the white middle-class woman was often held up as the most complete American ideal. She begins by studying gendered images of middle-class domesticity to expose a transformation of feminine architectures of interiority into the 'essences' of 'blood,' 'character,' and 'race.' She reads visual documents, as well as literary texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pauline Hopkins, and Theodore Dreiser, as both indices of and forms of resistance to dominant images of gender, class, race, and national identity. Through this analysis Smith shows how the white male gaze that sought to define and constrain white women and people of color was contested and transformed over the course of the nineteenth century"--Publisher's description
Beschreibung:	Description based on print version record and online resource (A&AePortal, viewed February 26, 2023)
Beschreibung:	1 Online-Ressource (xi, 299 Seiten) 56 Illustrationen (some color), Porträts
ISBN:	0300273177 9780300273175
DOI:	10.37862/aaeportal.00342